Day 5

     The Bible takes us back to the Lord who produced the Bible, the Creed, and the Church.  In it we find Him.  It is a means of Grace by which, in which, and through which Christ comes to us.  We must look past the Bible as literature to see the Lord; and then in, by and through the Scriptures hear Him speak to us today.

You can see what this means to the Church if you will consider some practical dangers that surround us.  There is the danger that if we are not guided by the objective fact of God’s action for us in Christ that we will simply reflect the world around us.  There is the danger which our tradition sees very clearly, that men will preach themselves, or impose upon others, innovations which are contrary to God’s Word.  There is the danger that we will take as our authority our own “feelings, passions, impulses”, rather than God’s Word.  This world is only going to be saved if we preach God’s truth; and that means that we must bring to our age a message which is not of this age.  We all have our own backgrounds, different homes, and tastes;  but we ought not to think like northerners or southerners, like rich people or poor people, like High Churchman or Low Churchman, like white people or colored people.  If we do, we divide ourselves, think like the world thinks, and bear no salvation to men.  We must turn to that Light which brightens our dark sky, and let the same mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus.  We are not gathered here to please  ourselves.  We are not here to cater to the public.  We are the Body of Christ, God’s people, placed on earth to do His will; and His Truth, high and lifted up, shines for us in the pages of Holy Writ.

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